> What is stopping any airline from simply opening fully owned subsidiaries in every country they want to fly from/to? Historically countries would have their

> What is stopping any airline from simply opening fully owned subsidiaries in every country they want to fly from/to? Historically countries would have their own airlines (more or less state owned) and thus the regulatory framework is build around ensuring monopoly rights for the one (today multiple) local airlines. A subsidiary fully owned by a foreign entity would under this framework not to be considered local. I can only give some example for Germany. Lufthansa, the local carrier, uses a special kind of stock ("Vinkulierte Namensaktien") [1], where each owner is actually tracked (citizenship, name, ...) and everyones ability of buying shares is subject to Lufthansa validating that with this change in ownership, the company will still be majority owned by Germans. [1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinkulation https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinkulation